NEW DELHI:The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas seeking scrapping of Section 377, which criminalises same sex acts and said that it was their fundamental duty to strike down a provision the moment they spotted it as unconstitutional.

“We would not wait for the majoritarian government to enact, amend or not to enact any law to deal with violations of fundamental rights,” a five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra observed.
The bench gave another indication that it would declare that Section 377 violates the right under Article 21 of the LGBTQ community to sexuality, sexual orientation and choice of sexual partner, when Justice RF Nariman said, “If Section 377 of the IPC goes away entirely, there will be anarchy. We are solely on consensual acts between man-man, man-woman. Consent is the fulcrum here. You cannot impose your sexual orientation on others without their consent.”

Justice Nariman added that the whole objective of the fundamental rights was to empower the court to strike down laws like Section 377.The observations came when lawyer Shyam George, appearing for Apostolic Alliance of Churches and Utkal Christian Association, said that it was not the job of the court and it was for the legislature to decide whether to enact or amend the existing law. George added that unnatural sexual activity was against the order of nature.

“What is the ‘order of nature’? Is it only ‘order of nature’ if sex is meant for procreation? Every sexual act which does not lead to procreation is against the order of nature for you,” the bench asked.

Comments

Disclaimer : We respect your thoughts and views! But we need to be judicious while moderating your comments. All the comments will be moderated by the newindianexpress.com editorial. Abstain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks. Try to avoid outside hyperlinks inside the comment. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines.

The views expressed in comments published on newindianexpress.com are those of the comment writers alone. They do not represent the views or opinions of newindianexpress.com or its staff, nor do they represent the views or opinions of The New Indian Express Group, or any entity of, or affiliated with, The New Indian Express Group. newindianexpress.com reserves the right to take any or all comments down at any time.